


Parate Regis Corvi

by paintedpolarbear



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Alternate Universe, Fix-It, Gen, POV Richard Gansey III, The Raven King Spoilers, background bluesey, background pynch
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-18
Updated: 2018-02-01
Packaged: 2018-12-03 14:38:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,498
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11534307
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paintedpolarbear/pseuds/paintedpolarbear
Summary: Glendower is dust and bones in his forgotten tomb. Gansey is mourning. But fate isn't done with him yet.





	1. Chapter 1

This was wrong. This was all wrong.

 

It couldn't be _over_.

 

Ronan swallowed thickly, in the manner of holding back tears. Adam’s breathing was ragged around the edges, his hand still resting on the cave wall, the other hanging limply at his side--Blue had let go. And Henry, God bless him, repeating her careful question:

 

“Gansey?”

 

Something broke.

 

Gansey let go the bones of Glendower and sat back on the cavern floor, clapping both hands over his mouth rather than let his shaking breath escape. The room blurred. Some animalistic noise pierced the silence, grieved and hollow and utterly, utterly ruined. It was a moment before he realized that the noise was his own sobbing.

 

He was not only grieving for his king and his quest. He was mourning himself, the version of Gansey he had been for seven years. The one who had admitted that he didn't know who he was without Glendower.

 

There was no telling how long they remained. Time, fickle to begin with in the vicinity of the ley line, was entirely apostate in this cave, running faster, slower, stopping, repeating. Here, in this unmagical hole in the ground, that had opened at his word, for the purpose of--it seemed, now, no purpose at all. Purposeless, wasted, extraneous. Gansey felt as though his own existence since the age of ten had already careened headlong in the same erroneous direction, and there were no exit ramps.

 

There were, however, ravens.

 

They’d entered silently, or perhaps while he had been crying, or perhaps in the manner of Noah, not-here-then-here-then-always-here. They papered every horizontal surface of the cavern, barely visible in the cloying darkness, known only by their blinking eyes and the gentle, restless shuffling sounds they made. Before, it had been dark; now it was black.

 

“What the fuck,” Ronan whispered, as a statement rather than a question. Merely an observation of the world around him rather than a demand for his surroundings to explain themselves. Henry’s silhouette appeared to shrug; the feeble light bobbed across the rock.

 

_So you understand_ , said a voice in the dark, or perhaps many voices, or perhaps no voice at all.

 

“What?” Gansey, scrubbing at his eyes with the back of a hand, thought for a moment he must have been hallucinating. His grief was screwing with his head. Was there fresh air coming from anywhere down here? Was he succumbing to carbon monoxide poisoning, or whatever it was that killed cave divers when they went deep enough to need air tanks?

 

_It was necessary that you see for yourself._

 

Gansey saw nothing, and wondered what it was he had been supposed to see. “Why?” he whispered, which seemed the more relevant question. His tired throat scratched at the words. He felt eyes on him, more eyes than all his friends had combined, but he couldn't even begin to explain himself.

 

_Owain Glyndŵr is long dead. Your future must be yours alone_.

 

“I don't understand.”

 

Silence. The thought winked through his mind that his friends probably couldn't hear the voice, that they remained quiet, at a respectable distance, only out of consideration for his bereavement, that they were wordlessly agreeing to have him committed as soon as they returned to the land of the living. He couldn't exactly blame them. He didn't exactly feel like the sanest of persons at the moment.

 

A shifting noise--Gansey startled. One raven’s glossy eye fixed on him, nearly glowing in the dim, and it _haw_ ed softly, shuffling its feet in an impatient-seeming sort of manner. It took him entirely too long to notice what the raven wanted him to see, and when he did, it was like a shock of ice water running down his back, matched in reality by Blue’s sharp inhale. The entire flock began to _haw, haw, haw._

 

“ _Gansey_ ,” she breathed. What she meant was: _the sword_.

 

Indeed, the raven was perched at Glendower’s left hand, perfectly balanced on the gleaming pommel of the sword. As he watched, it skittered backward onto the stone, stirring up dust, and fixed him again with its eerie gaze. Time was pulling. The slipshod passing of minutes didn't seem to apply to Gansey at all.

 

The sword looked brand new. Despite the weakness of the flashlight, enough light filled the room that he could see that for a fact--untouched by rust or moisture, as though it had only just been laid on the stone a moment ago. Not dead, but sleeping.

 

_You know what this means, don't you?_

 

He did not, but he could guess, and he would; and he could hope, and he dared. With every furious pounding of his heart he became more sure of it. The answer to the puzzle had been before him all along: his life, his ache, his quest, his inexplicable power--and the glorious ravens that had announced Glendower--

 

That had preceded _him_.

 

_So you understand_ , said a voice, or perhaps many voices, or perhaps no voice at all. The words rang with pride, with certainty, with eagerness, with joy. He didn't understand, but that didn't matter now: he would move forward anyway. It was what he had always done. It was what he would always do.

 

“ _Excelsior_ ,” he said, and took up the Raven King’s sword.

 

It didn't glow. No heavenly song echoed from the cavern walls. No mighty rush of wind stirred the dust and bones. No thunder rumbled through the earth.

 

But Gansey was not empty anymore.

 

The room exploded into noise as the ravens suddenly and unexpectedly took flight all at once. Ronan swore and threw his arms up to shield himself from the whirlwind; the rest didn't move, transfixed, faces tilted upward to the ravens in awe.

 

_Rex, rex, rex_ , they cried. Feathers and wings buffeted everything in the small space. There was nothing but ravens. Nothing in the world except ravens. _Rex vivit! Rex corvus vivit! Rex corvus tamen vivit! Parate regis corvi!_

* * *

The way out was much shorter than the getting in had been. Gansey wasn't sure he felt time slipping--this felt less like a memory of long ago and more like retracing the steps he'd taken merely hours prior--but he was certain the ley line was folding on itself to speed their passage.

 

_Make way for the Raven King_ , the ravens cried. Wings buffeted his face as they flocked to the open air, tender caresses on his cheek. His head was spinning. As deeply as he had grieved--and grieved still--for his dead Welsh king, he also knew the Gansey that had sought him lay just as dead in that cave. Now, there was only this: a cold sword, unbelievably real, clutched in his hand; Henry’s borrowed sweater on his shoulders, distinctly and un-regally wet; a heart that promised to go on and on and on.

 

_Make way for the Raven King!_ His lungs felt too big to contain his breath.

 

His certainty that time had progressed normally was undermined when they emerged into the last remnants of a scarlet Henrietta sunset. His stomach dropped as he realized it must have been almost a day: hadn't it been full night when he arrived? Adam tugged Ronan’s phone from his pocket and checked the time.

 

“It's the fourteenth,” he frowned, turning the display so they could all see that the default font proclaimed _4/14,_ as well as the obviously wrong time and several missed calls. Ronan made a feeble noise of indignation and a half-hearted swipe for the phone, which Adam held out of his reach without looking. “Wasn't your mom's fundraiser supposed to be today?”

 

“The fifteenth,” Gansey corrected. “I told Helen I might be unfashionably late, which she was understandably upset about. I thought I was going to miss it altogether.”

 

“That's awfully convenient,” said Blue, who was looking at Gansey with an expression that had the same meaning as the tone of voice he used for the word  _coincidence_. He silently agreed, but he couldn't find it in him to be anything but grateful, riding on the high of success.

 

Henry merely clapped him on the shoulder and quietly said, “Well done, Gansey Boy,” which filled him with more warmth than he thought possible. Then, a bit louder, for everyone's benefit: “So what's the plan, your majesty? Road trip? Slumber party? Massive kegger at Litchfield? Regardless: bring the whole cabinet. I'll handle snacks.” Gansey thought his mind was probably making an audible whirring noise as he attempted to follow the train of logic. Probably it came out of his mouth as a dopey “Huh?”

 

“Snacks. For the party,” Henry orated, slinging one arm over Gansey’s shoulder and making vague movements in the direction of the car. “We’ve a coronation to celebrate, do we not? I think we need to--oh what's the saying? Party like it's nineteen ninety-nine. Wait--don't move, Third, you look immortal in this light--” Henry fumbled for his cell phone, took a photo with an actual honest-to-god camera-shutter sound effect, swiped a few keys, and turned the phone so Gansey could see his seconds-old Instagram post, captioned only “#nofilterneeded.” It had seventeen likes already. Blue appeared at his other hand and gaped at the picture.

 

A muffled shout came raucously toward them: “Gimme my phone, turdwagon.”

 

Gansey turned. Adam’s face was split in a wide grin, legs pedaling six inches off the grass--Ronan had lifted him by the waist and was currently attempting to wrestle the phone from Adam’s white-knuckled grip, the both of them laughing infectiously (“I’ll tickle you, Parrish, I swear to Jesus--”). Gansey’s heart fluttered, and his knees wobbled. He felt like flying. In the rapidly fading twilight, here in the abandoned yard of his childhood home where his quest had begun, it was ending, and this was right. This was _right_. 

 

A moment later, it was all undone.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They're not out of the woods yet.

The air changed: something in the wind, like the smell of rain, or the hair-standing-up feeling of an oncoming thunderstorm. Somewhere farther back in the grass, there was a choking noise, and Adam stumbled backward, dripping something between the fingers clenched over his mouth, something that could have been blood, except it was so _dark_ , so _black_.

 

Ronan’s voice, tiny: “Adam?”

 

Time muddled around Gansey’s ankles and he felt rooted in place, helpless to do more than watch as everything happened too fast to stop--Adam’s eyes widening, going blank, rolling back--a strangled gasp that sounded almost painful--then the demon put Adam’s hands around Ronan’s neck and squeezed.

 

Gansey’s blood went cold as he tried to make his legs move, tried to run, tried to do _something_ . His breath came in sporadically as he thought what everyone must have been thinking: _I will be your eyes. I will be your hands._

 

“No, _stop it_ ,” he shouted, wrenching his legs into action at last and giving chase, Henry and Blue right on his heels, sword forgotten entirely. Ronan had been smashed against a tree and was turning a horrific shade of purple. He wasn't fighting back.

 

“Hit me,” Adam said, voice thin and desperate. Gansey felt cold all over. “Fight back. Hit me!”

 

Ronan still wasn't.

 

Blue reached the edge of the trees and drove her shoulder into Adam’s side, jarring him loose with momentum alone, and they tumbled farther into the woods. Ronan crumpled, choking. Adam regained his feet and went two ways at once--his hands lunged for Blue, while the rest of him tripped over itself in the opposite direction. The result was that Henry skidded to a halt inside the treeline just as Gansey reached them, and the demon focused its attention on them instead.

 

The fight dragged on, because the demon fought dirty, fought vicious, and they fought hardly at all. It was Adam, and no matter how much he begged, none of them wanted to hurt him. But the demon did not reciprocate their feelings. Henry snatched a handful of Adam’s hair; vengeful fingernails raked across his face. Gansey reached to quell that angry hand and got a mouthful of knuckles and a split lip for his trouble. Blue slapped him. He tore her stitches open.

 

Ronan finally got his feet under him and grabbed one of Adam’s forearms. Instantly Adam whirled, eyes focused and terrifyingly empty, wrenched his shoulder in the process, and smashed his fist into the tree behind Ronan’s head, with not even a twitch betraying any pain.

 

Gansey reached again for that hand--Adam jerked away-- “quit it, dumbass, you're going to break it” --Ronan lost his grip and nearly fell-- “it's okay, it's okay Adam, it's okay” --Blue darted between them to twist his arm roughly behind his back--Ronan came up beside and wrapped his arms around Adam’s torso, pinning him-- “ _paenitet me, paenitet me”_ \-- “ _nemo est vestrum erit flagitium” --_

 

And it was over.

* * *

The Orphan Girl, who had been waiting in the BMW, took in the sight of them with wide eyes--Adam bound and blindfolded, stumbling a little, bleeding from his hands and something black dribbling from his mouth; Blue and Henry nursing matching head wounds; Gansey’s swollen lip.

 

And Ronan, bringing up the rear, a necklace of violet bruises stark in the unending twilight, dried blood on the back of his head, a haunted expression. When she saw him, she wailed and reached for him with petulant hands. He kissed them.

 

They bundled Adam into the backseat, sandwiched between Blue and Henry at his own insistence. The Orphan Girl wiggled down from Ronan’s hip and planted herself firmly on Adam’s lap as soon as he was settled; he spooked at the contact but calmed when she unstrapped the chewed-up watch from her wrist and fastened it carefully around his own. He was barely shaking at all.

 

Scowling, Ronan emptied his lungs and stretched his arms over the driver's-side roof. His throat bobbed, and Gansey thought he looked unusually young, fidgeting with the leather at his wrist and the BMW keys in his hand. “What now, your highness?” This was only slightly facetious. “Where to?”

 

Gansey was too shaken to think; the rest of them, he suspected, equally so. Adam corrupted, Adam defeated, Adam only sitting upright because of his family squeezed into the backseat on either side of him. He felt rather sick at all of it. He wondered when was the last time he had thought of Noah.

 

“Cabeswater?” Blue suggested with only a touch of hesitance. “It would be...circular.” Which meant _right._ “And we still have to kill the demon. Seems a good place.”

 

“We still have to figure out how,” said Ronan, his face pinching. “Not a fan of the _willing death_ thing.”

 

“There's not a whole lot of room for interpretation,” Adam said. Blue looked like she wanted to argue, but he couldn't tell, so he continued. “It's an exchange. The demon was created when someone spilled innocent blood on the line. Committed murder. Short of going back in time and stopping that from happening, I'm surprised there's a way to undo it at all.”

 

“So, we’re making up for someone dying by killing someone. Perfectly sensible.” That was Henry. Gansey wordlessly folded himself into the front passenger seat and shut the door, although he didn't buckle his seat belt.

 

Then, quietly: “It's not like we don't have a willing sacrifice right here.”

 

"Jesus," Ronan said. "Christ."

 

Ronan got in the car and slammed the door; he opened it and slammed it again, harder; he opened it and slammed it a third time, just for emphasis. Then he cranked the engine. “Move upfront, gremlin,” he growled. This was to the Girl, although he remained facing forward, one hand white-knuckled on the steering wheel, the other hovering just above the ignition. Gansey never quite understood Ronan’s penchant for horrid pet names, but she never seemed to mind. She blinked, but didn't move. “Up. Front. Sit on Gansey’s lap. Whatever.”

 

“It's fine,” Adam said. “It doesn't want...her.” The obvious, unsaid,--what the demon _did_ want--hung in the air. Ronan’s silent fury was a tangible thing: it rolled from him in waves, stormclouds on the edge of a wind. It had texture, shape. He stewed in it, ordinarily reveled in it. Now, though, he was wallowing in it: jaw clenching, brow knotting, fingers curling around the gearshift. The silence, too, was physical.

 

Adam tried again. “I might as well be the sacrifice,” he whispered. “I’m ruined.” His voice ground up against the last word.

 

Ronan’s expression hardened further. “ _No_.”

 

The car was still idling, spilling hot exhaust into the ozone layer and grumbling impatiently for the freeway. Blue shifted--her motion caught Gansey’s eye in the rearview mirror--to increase the amount of sideways in her posture, and leaned forward.

 

“Cabeswater, then,” she asked. Murmurs of agreement rippled through the car. It was as good a place as any to start.

 

Something Gansey had forgotten poked at his mind just then. He frowned, trying to jostle the memory loose, then his gaze caught on something rustling outside the car.

 

Ravens. All of them.

 

Gansey threw the car door open and immediately found what he had left--Glendower’s sword, lying in the grass where he had so thoughtlessly dropped it. He allowed himself a brief moment to feel guilty, then grabbed it by the hilt and turned to replace himself in the front passenger seat.

 

Gansey happened to look down at his watch, which had turned 6:21.

 

“Hrk,” said Ronan, and he fell unconscious.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I want to apologize for "tomorrow" stretching into almost a week. This story has quite gotten away from me! Hopefully I can have the next part up within the next week, but I've reached the end of what I've written and I can't promise I'll be productive. Regardless, thanks to everyone who read Part I and expressed excitement for the next chapter. You all keep me going.


	3. Chapter 3

The front seat slammed backwards as Ronan jerked, eyes flicking open for one palpable moment before he fell again, thrashing between life and dreams. He surfaced, gasping, impossible blue flower petals cascading from his hands, and he drowned again, spasming. Every time he regained consciousness, it was like he was heaving himself up to it; every time he fell, he had been dragged downwards. There was a tiny whimper from the back seat.

 

Ronan clawed himself awake again, just long enough to lock eyes with Gansey still only half in the car. Wide eyes. Desperate eyes. Lightning bugs and silver swords the size of toothpicks and red leaves scrawled with illegible Latin were spilling onto the floorboard. Silvery insect wings and red plums with the leaves still attached and chalk dust that drifted into the shapes of rounded lopsided triangles of its own accord and something black dribbling from his mouth. A raven croaked, warningly.

 

Gansey was so, so afraid.

 

“Help me,” he breathed, pulling himself out of the car, scrambling around to the driver’s side and throwing the door open. Blue streaked out of the car to help him lower Ronan into the grass. 

 

“Is it—?” She was too afraid to say the word. Gansey nodded, once, and pressed his hand to Ronan’s pulse. It fluttered limply. Paused, for too long. Fluttered again. Gansey swore.

 

“Enough,” he said. Blue had her hands pressed to Ronan’s shoulders, trying to hold him still, while the road filled with a flood of--something that might have been blood if it weren’t so dark, so black.

 

“What the—” Henry began.

 

“ _ Enough,”  _ Gansey said.

 

And he felt it, the kingly power under his lungs that summoned spectral herds and commanded men. 

 

He felt it, his regal inheritance, and he was afraid. 

 

He was afraid, but he spoke.

 

“ _ Enough! Come at me! Fight me if you dare, demon!” _

 

Right after he spoke, he felt it: the air itself heaving at the presence of the unmaker. He felt it: the hair standing up on the back of his neck at the electric malevolence that pierced him. Oh, yes. The demon  _ would _ dare.

 

The wind had not stirred when he took up the Raven King’s sword; there was a whirlwind now, rattling the dead limbs of the trees into a whispering gale. The earth had not shaken when he took up the Raven King’s sword; it trembled now, setting the pool of blood-water into fractured agitation. The sky had not howled when he took up his sword; it screamed now, filled with blackness and unmaking and the mouths of ravens.

 

The demon was here.

 

It did not so much  _ arrive _ as it did  _ appear _ , hastily folding up the moment of its emergence from the pool in the road and tucking it out of sight; Gansey blinked, and there it was, dripping with blood-water-blackness and balanced, quivering, on the asphalt, one articulated leg waving up and down with all the deliberate slowness of deadly insect that was hyperaware of its own deadliness. It was fully three feet long, its carapace glossy in a way real insects should not be, its eyes at once both rolling wildly and eerily still, and it sent a lancet of dread into his stomach.

 

_ doomed prince of rotted saplings, whose sword do you wield? _

 

The voice in his head should not have melded so easily with his thoughts. He felt himself begin shaking, his lungs becoming shallow and stiff. He was well-practiced in the art of ignoring the burbling doubt in his gut, even as it became the loudest voice in his consciousness, even as it overwhelmed his senses and shut his body down, even as he began to believe it; so he did, he breathed and held himself upright and willed his body not to fail him. Several ravens dug their claws into his sword arm, which was loose at his side. He leveled his sword at the monstrous wasp, and the ravens wheeled into the air.

 

_ it will not save you i will unmake them all i will unmake everything _

 

Gansey chanced a look backwards, towards the car. 

 

_ your magician _

 

Adam had gone still except for his straining hands, his head lolling. Scrying into the darkness in the blindfold, soul unspooling out, out, out. Gambling that he’d be able to wade back, without the tender branches of Cabeswater to guide the way.

 

_ your dreamer _

 

Blue had Ronan’s head cradled into her lap. She clutched at his shoulders as he writhed, spilling dream things from his hands, gasping and gasping and gasping for breath. Something black trickled from her nose.

 

_ your tir e’elint _

 

The little Orphan Girl was sprawled in the backseat of the BMW with a vacant expression; Henry Cheng was stroking her hair.

 

_ your own heart _

 

There was a hush, a stillness at the edge of the wood, where the shadows of ghostly elk coalesced into a herd for a single second before misting away. Gansey felt his heartbeat forget to land, once, twice, and his vision blurred. Somewhere overhead, a raven or a thousand ravens cawed.

 

The demon would unmake him, was unmaking him. The ley line heart that he had been given here would be taken from him here as well.

 

Gansey spoke a single word: “ _ No.” _

 

The sky fell.

* * *

Ravens. All of them.

 

Wheeling, rasping, lunging, falling.

 

Close enough to strike. Close enough to be unmade.

 

Black hands. Not hands—claws. Not claws—antennae. No—just black.

 

Beaks gasping open—in fury, in pain, in being wrested away from the orderly march of sanity. Wings spasming and bending in ways things shouldn’t bend, the cries of dying things echoing.

 

The birds writhed. Like Ronan. Like Cabeswater.  _ Unmade _ . This had gone on long enough. This: Gansey standing back and letting others fight for him.

 

As the last of the ravens wheeled away, into the sky rather than face the unmaker, heeding his intention, he hefted the sword and swung.

* * *

The demon’s jointed foot tapped with seeming impatience. Although, because it lacked the capacity to form facial expression, it was difficult to tell exactly what emotion it was trying to convey. Possibly it could have been frustration, or nervousness, or glee. Possibly it did not experience emotion.

 

_ what now, little prince? _

 

Gansey knelt, panting, in the grass, liquid claws tearing at his skin. Night-black fangs bit down on him. It wasn’t enough that the demon attacked his mind, twisting his insomniac thoughts and stoking the fog of his frequent despair; no, it was attacking his body as well. Fat drops of his blood sizzled on the ground; his head spun with both fatigue and terror.

 

Gansey’s throat was tight, choking on remembered hornets. He knew it wasn’t real, knew that the demon was pressing the memory of his first death into his mind, but that knowledge did nothing to stop the crawling of insect legs on his skin, the buzzing of wings in his ears, the  _ pain _ , the fire of their poison in his mouth in his lungs in his bones in his heart in his skin in his skin—.

 

Oh, God, the pain. He couldn’t help but scream.

 

_ little bastard princeling your quest is at an end _

 

Gansey couldn’t see through the yellow-and-black-and-yellow-and-black-and-yellow-and-black-and-

 

_ whose greatness do you seek what greatness will you find _

 

His mind swarmed with the demon’s visions of death—Ronan pulled apart at the molecules into unrecognizable gore—Adam glassy-eyed and broken—Blue curled in a nest of corrupted vines—Henry, mauled, in the wrong place at the wrong time—Noah—

 

—cold fingers wrapped around his, shaking him, trying to wake him from his stupor—

 

_ what purposeless quest will consume you now that i have killed you a second time _

 

—quietly, soundlessly, he fell to his hands and knees, the sword dropping on the ground—

 

_ “Gansey!” _

 

He couldn’t place the source of the unearthly scream. He couldn’t see. He couldn’t  _ breathe. _

 

Time, and his heartbeat, stopped entirely.

* * *

“Gansey. Gansey!”

 

He blinked. Noah was crouched beside him where he sprawled on the grass, his head too heavy to lift. Noah had with him an air of being strained and urgent, which was not necessarily concerning in and of itself, but then, that had not been his usual air for quite some time; and then, this seemed to be a situation that called for some measure of strain and urgency. Gansey tried to muster the energy to pay attention, but he was fairly certain that the wetness under his hands was his own blood and that there was a lot of it, so he hoped he could be forgiven for not doing much more than sort of tilting his head in Noah’s general direction.

 

“Gansey,” Noah said again, his freezing fingers grasping at whatever bare skin was nearest. Even compared to the ghost he had been, he was decayed: very close, very cold, his features smudged out of recognizability, his voice more akin to the echo coming off of a mountain wall. The sunlight didn’t seem perturbed to be passing directly through him. “Gansey, get up! You’re not finished!”

 

_ I can’t _ , Gansey replied.  _ I can’t go on. _ Or maybe he only thought it. Either way, Noah continued shaking him.

 

“You have to! Everything will fall apart if you don’t. Gansey!”

 

His eyes had slipped closed again. His brain was failing to comprehend the immediacy of the problem. Artemus had said  _ willing life _ , hadn’t he? And now. Well.

 

“No, no no no no no  _ Gansey! _ You can’t just give up! This isn’t how it ends!”

 

But wasn’t it? He’d known all along that he’d die before May. The demon’s promises of carnage howled at him. And if this was how his story ended, then he would be okay with that. He was afraid, but it would be okay.

 

Cold arms snaked around his shoulders. Noah was trying to pull him to his feet, to convince his broken body to support his weight. Dragging fingers through his hair. Murmuring  _ no, no, no, no, no _ .

 

_ Noah. It’s okay _ .

 

He might have said it out loud. He might have only thought it. Everything was dark. Everything was dark. Everything was—

 

“It’s not to kill the demon. It’s just another murder.”

 

Noah sounded like he might have been crying, for all ghosts were capable of such a thing, because something about his voice was thick and trembling. His hands were frantic, shaking and prying and finally pulling him into a tight embrace. 

 

“ _ Nomine appellant,” _ Noah whispered. “Gansey. Gansey! This is all I have left. Don't throw it away.”

 

A sudden burst of color behind his eyelids. A rush of warm air into his lungs. A faint pressure against the top of his head that quickly vanished. An unearthly howl as the earth itself shuddered, rewriting itself around the monstrosity of the unmaker.

 

Gansey opened his eyes.

 

Noah had gone.

 

Time restarted. There was the  _ thump _ of his heart, once, twice, again and again and again, and his vision cleared. New strength swarmed his arteries, his muscles, his bones, and he pushed himself up to his hands and knees.

 

The world roiled. Blood-water-blackness poured at him from all directions.

 

Shaking, shuddering, gripping the hilt of his sword with numb and trembling hands, he stood, feeling clarified and empowered and resolute and utterly terrified. The terror was alright, as long as he had the strength to stand it. And he did.

 

The demon’s voice was still a furious thing inside his head, ripping and shredding like an infinity of claws. It was a shriek of rage, impatient at being denied for so long. But Gansey could see the threads that the demon was unspinning, the darkest and loneliest and worst of his own thoughts, and set them apart from his real thoughts.

 

His real thoughts were about Ronan—his light and determination, his smile and goodness and fierce loyalty.

 

His real thoughts were about Adam—his resourcefulness and pride, his love and his strength and his endless courage.

 

He thought of Henry and his boundless optimism and his ordinary magic and his wit and his friendship, newborn but unshakeable in its certainty.

 

He thought of Blue and her righteousness, her  _ rightness _ , the successes she wrought for herself to spite the ones who said she couldn’t.

 

He thought of Noah’s effervescent joy, his curiosity and his  _ livingness _ ; how he was, despite everything, alive.

 

He thought of them all, the love—yes, he decided,  _ love _ —that tied them together with a bond that was stronger than distance, stronger than time, stronger than the maleficence bent on shredding them apart.

 

_ Nomine appellant. _

 

“Demon,” he spat, willing his voice to be steady, his hands to be strong. “Be gone.”

 

The shrieking rose to a deafening roar, stirring up the fear that turned his stomach inside out and made his knees weak and his hands tremble. Furious, indignant, enraged at being denied. The demon groped for his weakest, darkest thoughts and pulled them with all its might to the surface, while black claws pulled themselves from the pool of water-blood-darkness-despair and flowed toward him through the dirt.

 

The sword glistened in what was left of the sunlight—too bright, too stark, too colorless—as Gansey held it aloft: the claws recoiled with a hiss of pain.

 

“That's all you are,” he said, certainty flooding him. He knew, he knew, he  _ knew _ \-- “Doubt and isolation and fear and all that. It's all you are.”

 

Reality shrieked and shuddered. Someone, something screamed.

 

_ Nomine appellant. _

 

Panting, Gansey summoned every ounce of strength he possessed, every fiber and nerve screaming for relief as he brandished his sword. With every word he swung, chopping at the fingers of darkness that the demon stretched out toward him. “You're terror and abandonment and pointless violence. Betrayal. Arrogance. Selfishness. Desecration.”

 

Cabeswater—what was left of Cabeswater—fluttered weakly in his chest. Maybe it was his heart. For a brief, insane moment, he wondered if there was a difference, born and reborn on the ley line as he was. The demon buzzed and flickered, rising inch by inch into the air, and his breath sucked out of his lungs.

 

_ here you were born little bastard princeling here you will die _

 

“Just try it,” he grit out, and it was the most powerful thing he had ever said. 

 

The sky boiled and turned to black; everything was dark. Everything was dark. Everything was—

 

_ “Conteret vos,” _ he finally gasped, and drove the sword between the unmaker’s bottomless eyes.

 

And everything was quiet.

 

The world stilled, the awful pressure in his chest eased—for a moment he just knelt there in the grass, panting, clutching at the hilt of the sword standing upright in the muddy gravel road. Nothing besides his own heaving chest was making a sound. Then it seemed as though all creation was waking up from a long dream.

 

The road was dry, because the dark pool of maybe-water-maybe-blood had vanished with the demon’s death. The forest was still, because the magic, spinning in the event horizon of the demon’s malice, was free. The air was quiet, because Ronan had stopped dying, and Blue was no longer gripping his shoulders in her frantic inability to save him.

 

He was alive. He was alive. He was alive.

 

Gansey pushed himself to his feet by the hilt of the sword, marveling again at the stretch of his muscles, the stinging pull of nerves, the creak of bones and ligaments and tendons that all still worked together. Feeling the steady  _ thump, thump, thump _ of his pulse under his breastbone. Savoring the bite of the April-sunset air filling his lungs all the way to the bottom. He was  _ alive. _

 

“Gansey!”

 

This time, he identified the shriek as Blue’s voice. Blue, running full-tilt toward him. Ronan, trailing her by half a pace, wobbling a little. Henry, pulling himself out of the BMW in open-mouthed astonishment. 

 

Blue and Gansey collided with the force of a meteor striking earth—her arms crushed around his shoulders, hips digging into hips and ankles digging into ankles, the brunt of her cheekbone bruising his neck. She trembled with the force of holding him: he could feel her ribcage shaking under his palms.

 

“Gansey,” she whispered again, and finally he heard her voice cracking with the tears she was trying not to shed. He closed his eyes and pulled her shirt into wads between his fingers, like he could somehow dig his hands in and hold her so tightly that he would never have to let go. He wanted to; he wanted to cling to her so tightly he couldn’t let go.

 

Moments like this are often made for being remembered. They find their way down through the cracks in your brain and grow their roots in the hippocampus and poke their thorns into the amygdala, weaving themselves into the architecture of your neural center so that they become as long-lived as you. Memories like these, with all their emotions and images and neurological associations that make removal complicated, become a part of you, hopelessly entwined with your body at the sub-cellular level. Often, with practice, you can begin to predict which moments will become memories that become part of your soul. They’re the kind of stuff that gets written in your biography—or, at least, the unofficial autobiography that you’ll compose in the margins of loose-leaf notebook paper and collect in a box under your bed.  They start to feel more important than the moments in between. They feel like moments worth becoming.

 

That was how Gansey knew that Blue was going to kiss him the moment before she turned her head. 

 

That was how he knew that, when he turned his head to meet her lips with his own, he would live. 

 

It was a moment predestined to become a part of him.

 

Oh, he felt it, all right—the moment her curse took hold. Mirror held against mirror, reflection and reflection. She was born a mirror; he had been made that way. So when they faced each other, soul butted up against soul, one of them was supposed to give way. The push-and-tug of the obtuse magic that governed their lives would find one to be stronger than the other, and it would shatter the other. But Gansey felt his heart keep right on beating the way it was supposed to, and he felt his lungs continue to fill as always, and he felt the soft motions of Blue's lips that meant her heart was beating and her lungs were as full as ever. He supposed he much preferred that even the universe had decided that actually, they were equal. He didn't understand it, but who could? So after he felt the curse take hold, he felt it shatter like glass.  


 

Right after they broke apart, she sucked in a tremendous breath and let it out again. Her hands, cold and soft and shivering, reached up to lace behind his neck, the paper ridges of her thumbprints tracing the curve of his jaw. Slowly, he reached out to brush a strand of her hair out of her face, but it was too short to stay tucked behind her ear and fell back down anyway.

 

His heart was still beating, terrifically fast. Her mouth was still shaped like the kiss.

 

“Gansey,” Ronan said, and Gansey could hear the creaking tiredness that came from being unraveled at the seams, and Gansey could see the wonder that came from still being alive after, and Gansey could see the relief beyond relief at the both of them being alive. After a moment, Ronan fell on him with his full weight, wrapping his arms around Gansey’s shoulders. It was an embrace that, at once, both shouldered the weight of the world and shared it. It was two people who had nearly died and then hadn’t, and were forever changed because of it.

 

“Fuck, man,” Ronan said, almost too quiet to hear.

 

“Yeah,” Gansey agreed.

 

Henry caught up to them then, and, after only a moment of hesitation, added his arms to the pile.

 

Footsteps, soft and careful, made Gansey look up to see Adam, unbound, the Orphan Girl halfway dragging him by the elbow. A little joy, a little wonder, the sunrise glow of relief--but mostly, it was misplaced shame that marred his expression, and it broke Gansey’s heart to see it.

 

“Hey, tiger,” Gansey said softly. The corner of Adam’s mouth dimpled. Then he, too, joined them.

 

Neither a moment nor an eternity, but somewhere in between. Fixed in time, yet untouched by its ravages. The mundane, twilight Virginia forest stretched out around them, the Blue Ridge mountains smudging the skyline in the distance--and somewhere beyond, the little kingdom of Henrietta waited for them to come home.

 

Wings fluttered and flapped and Gansey looked up to see Chainsaw spiraling overhead, a lone dark shape in the darkening sky. She alighted on his right shoulder, flapped to balance herself--once, twice, three times--then stretched her neck, puffed out her chest, and cawed for all the Shenandoah Valley to hear, jubilant, regal, victorious. Each cry sent joy and triumph singing through his veins.

 

All he had was this: an empty tomb, a shining sword, a family nearly crushing him in their happiness at being alive, a heart that promised to go on and on and on.

 

Glendower was dead, but the Raven King was alive.

 

Gansey was more than awake. He had been woken.

 

He was alive.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> After...six months...it's finally done. It's been a long haul. Everyone who's even so much as opened the link (all one hundred thirteen of you) thank you. Every hit, kudos, comment, every note on tumblr, every like on my "lms if you want a sneak peek" posts. It all means so much to me, and this fic would have withered and died in the depths of my brain without you.
> 
> Big shoutout to @regis-corvi on tumblr who had a conversation with me back in July of 17, when I was a new raven cycle blog, which sparked the idea for this fic. Both of us wanted more from the ending than what we were given, so in a way, this is for you.
> 
> There's a playlist that goes along with this fic. Mostly instrumentals that I listened to while I was writing the last chapter, but there are also a few vocal tracks that I think help set the mood. You can listen to it on spotify here: https://tinyurl.com/parateregiscorvi
> 
> Thank you all once again for being with me throughout this fic.

**Author's Note:**

> I've been writing and writing and writing all weekend and now that my thoughts are somewhat aligned, I had to share this. Part II will be coming sometime tomorrow! (Yes, Noah will be included.)


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